In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched an ambitious series of social programs and legislation known as the "New Deal," designed to lift the United States out of the economic downturn of the Great Depression.

Related Speeches & Audio (10)

On October 18, 1931, as the nation faces a deepening depression, President Herbert Hoover announces in his radio address the inauguration of a six-week campaign to raise local relief funds to aid the unemployed.

On March 6, 1933, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the temporary closing of all banks in an effort to stem a financial crisis. On March 12, Roosevelt delivers his first fireside chat radio broadcast to assure the American people that their savings are safe.

On March 3, 1933, the newly elected president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, promises a country battered by the Great Depression a renewed prosperity, setting forth plans to put the government to work.

To ensure that there is enough food available to reach U.S. soldiers fighting abroad, the United States enacted a canned goods rationing program in 1942. Paul M. O'Leary of the Office of Price Administration carries on a "conversation" with a housewife and grocer in a December 12 radio broadcast.

In the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Depression, ABC News reports on September 14, 2008, on the impending collapse of the giant investment bank Lehman Brothers. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, provides further analysis.

In a speech delivered on February 6, 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull defends the reciprocal trade program he helped pass in 1934, stressing the urgency of continuing the plan as a peacekeeping measure.

George H. W. Bush's infamous promise delivered during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on August 18, 1988, became the campaign pledge that may have helped win him the election.

In an address to the nation on Labor Day 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt summarizes an earlier meeting with Congress in which he urged cooperation to pass his seven-point economic plan to fight inflation, which was presented to both houses on April 28.

Related Multimedia

Shop HISTORY

From the rigors of linking the continent by wagon trails to the transcontinental railway, the engineering of steel-structured buildings, through to landing on the moon, this epic 12-part series is a grand cinematic vision of how the USA was built.